


Calligraphy

by virginandmartyr



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Brief Mentions of Cannibalism, Gen, I just had a lot of pent-up emotions about george that I needed to expel, yes this is a george hodgson character study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:28:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23284021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virginandmartyr/pseuds/virginandmartyr
Summary: He wonders if he will be able to hold a pen again, after all this. It should be the least of his concerns.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 14





	Calligraphy

He wonders if he will be able to hold a pen again, after all this. It should be the least of his concerns. 

There are no utensils here – bar a few extant knives and forks. Was there not some passage in the Apocrypha about supping with the Devil? His brow furrows; narrowing and funneling this pallid thought. Irving will know.

 _Would have_ known. 

Irving, whose neurotic countenance had belied his innate succor and devotion. If his fellow lieutenant could bear witness to the atrocities committed upon the interminable shale, he would lament.

Hodgson was a man who had neither the inclination, nor courage, to covet vices. But he thinks he is no longer Lieutenant George Hodgson. That soul met its quietus upon the void. Only the vessel remains. One that has succumbed – to envy and gluttony alike. 

He envies Irving. Not for his eternal repose, but for his optimism. His dogged insistence that salvation was nigh, partnered with his child-like trust – the man’s manacles had been gilded. 

Mr Hickey’s dulcet tones carry across the wind. It is supper time. Hodgson ceases to think.

+++

What would his hand-writing look like now? Primitive? Mangled, as his once elegant fingers are? Deadened perhaps, like the rasping, reedy rhetoric he now spews. To think him, of all men, should degenerate into naught but nonsensical platitudes. 

As a former lieutenant, this is his prerogative; all the breath he has wasted upon turgid talk. Enough to fill the sails of a ship, no doubt. 

Which officer had sneered at him during such times? Little? No, no, the man had listened with his habitual beleaguered silence to his anecdotes. The man had been immutable. No, never Edward. 

Perhaps it had been Captain Crozier? Hodgson once took perverse satisfaction in needling his superior with his sunny disposition. Irregardless, the sentiments had dissipated long ago, laid to rest alongside his dignity, reputation and an assortment of other epithets that separated man from beast. 

Hodgson knows that he is ostensibly here, with Mr Hickey’s cabal, to lend an air of legitimacy. Without his appellation, no doubt Mr Hickey would have left him to decay. The suppurations on his skin his sole epitaph.

+++

He is expendable to them now, he knows this. Only fit to be consumed.

Hodgson wonders if his captors will do him the disservice of confining his cadaver to the tents.

+++

He does not brandish his hope like an effulgent sword. He nurses it; slipping it in-between his emaciated uniform and frame. 

Crozier is here. Amongst their ranks. He will offer him absolution when they abscond. Hodgson will play the fleeing damsel in earnest in order to gain his captain’s clemency. Anything to escape this purgatory.

+++

He can see them.

Serifs.

Curlicues.

When he is at liberty to close his eyes, he can see them.

An undulating tapestry of embellishments.

His identity had once been inextricably linked to these designs. Perhaps it still is.

The beast lumbers into view.

He thinks that he shall die as George Hodgson now.

He shall die whole.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to not be too ham-fisted with the religious imagery.  
> But I was pretty liberal with my typography references.


End file.
